The 20th anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), now called Rio+20, is being held from the 20th to 22nd of June 2012. To this day, there has been little clarity on the possible outcomes on the discussions of the two major themes of the Rio+20 conference, namely, 1) The green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication; and 2) the institutional framework for sustainable development (IFSD).
The Asia-Europe Environment Forum (ENVforum) contributed to the IFSD discourse by undertaking a series of consultations that gathered the opinions and contributions of 80 IFSD experts from diverse sectors in Asia and Europe. During these consultation meetings, it became clear that there is an urgent need for a source that could help clarify and explain reform options and their implications, particularly to Asia and Europe. As a result, the ENVforum commissioned a team of experts from Asia and Europe to analyse the various IFSD and International Environmental Governance (IEG) options, with support of foresight methodology and field research, as well as assess the inter-regional synergies in the IFSD and IEG debate.
This document reports on the consultation process and results of this study. It has four main sections: The consultation process and the findings resulting from it; the context within which the IFSD was conceived under Agenda 21 and what it has evolved into; the global dimension of the IFSD and the bigger, multi-layered and crucial downstream dimensions of the IFSD.
This publication is to serve as a reference for governments, non-state actors and other researchers in the many discussions during the Rio+20 Conference, as well as in the eventual implementation of the IFSD negotiation outcomes.